Ricoh to Launch its First Industrial 3D Printer

Ricoh 3D printer

Last September, Japanese imaging and electronics company, Ricoh stated its intentions for the 3D printing industry with the launch of its Additive Manufacturing Business (AM Business) to focus solely on 3D printers. Shortly after in January it became an official reseller of Leapfrog desktop printers and up until now, Ricoh has been selling third party 3D printers and providing a complete range of services, from consulting to 3D data design to fabrication.

Now the company has announced the launch of its first 3D printer under the Ricoh brand, an industrial selective laser sintering (SLS) machine, the RICOH AM S5500P.

Designed in collaboration with Aspect, the RICOH AM S5500P is capable of producing high-definition, durable parts. The machine features a large build area of 550 mm (W) × 550 mm (D) × 500 mm (H) and is capable of producing different kinds of parts at the same time, as well as mould large parts all at once.

In addition to the polymer powder materials commonly used with SLS technology, such as PA11 and PA12, universally applicable materials PA6 and Polypropylene can also be used.

Ricoh will add the new RICOH AM S5500P to the services it has been providing and promote introduction of the product to customers' design departments and manufacturing departments in order to even more strongly support the efforts of its customers for innovation in manufacturing.

Ricoh will begin taking orders for the machine on October 30th in Japan and then extend sales to Europe. Ricoh will exhibit at formnext powered by tct, the international exhibition and conference on additive technologies and tool making, on 17-20 November in Frankfurt alongside leading names in the industrial 3D printing sector including alphacam, 3D Systems, EnvisionTEC, EOS, HP, Keyence, Prodways, Realizer, Renishaw, Sisma, SLM, and Stratasys.